| |October 201819CIOReviewHaving been `proven' in a variety of sectors such as travel, hospitality, telecom, media, entertainment, banking and insurance - Digital is clearly mature and readyvalue and promise of Digital technologies. Having been `proven' in a variety of sectors such as travel, hospitality, telecom, media, entertainment, banking and insurance ­ Digital is clearly mature and ready.And that brings us to our second question: is Pharma ready? Let's consider the facts: only one in four phar-maceutical companies possesses `digital maturity,' ac-cording to McKinsey. This compares unfavorably with other sectors where the maturity levels are significantly higher, e.g. in travel and hospitality, where almost 50% of companies are digitally mature, or retail, where nearly 42% are.Why is this the case? Why is it that in an industry where tremendous benefits can be derived by digitally connecting suppliers, wholesalers, retailers, physicians and patients, so little progress has been made?The biggest reason is history: pharmaceuticals have traditionally been conservative, slow to adapt to change. Another reason is that the profit margins have been healthy, which has prevented these companies from hav-ing any kind of a compelling incentive to look to tech-nology with any sense of urgency. A. T. Kearny says, "It's time for Pharma to dive into Digital. The industry has been dipping a toe in the digital waters, but now it's time to take the plunge." If you ask business leaders in Pharma what they need to focus on in order to bring about digital transforma-tion, the likely answer would range from `We need to build analytics capabilities,' to, `We should bring in IoT and machine learning technologies.' The right answer, however, needs to go beyond technology capabilities.Here are the three pillars of a digital transformation strategy in the Pharma sector:1. Change the culture: adopt a `Digital First' philoso-phy. Pharmaceuticals should stop treating Digital as an interesting bolt-on to their existing processes, and adopt Digital as their primary approach to supply-chain man-agement and customer engagement. Kearny puts it best: "Today, everyone along the pharma value chain ­ pa-tients, physicians, pharmacists, payers, commissioners, regulators and government authorities ­ have a digital `self' that is generally far more open to sharing in cyber-space than in the real world. Like it or not, key opinion leaders, doctors, therapists, and patients increasingly communicate in the digital domain, and pharma needs to be part of the conversation."2. Change your business strategy: engage the entire business in digital transformation. Pharma needs to sys-tematically link Digital to its business at every level. It needs to be fully embedded into the core business. Re-look at everything: how you engage with your suppliers, doctors and patients. Today's patients, physicians and suppliers are all more digitally connected than ever be-fore. Figure out how they wish to interact, and modify your processes accordingly.3. Build Digital leadership within your organization. Top executives need to understand the digital world and need to be convinced that their businesses will be fun-damentally transformed by the digital revolution. And then they would be well served to make the widespread changes that are required. The majority of your leader-ship team needs to be able to identify their digital-relat-ed key performance indicators.Digital is certainly ready, and if Pharma can get its act together, it can transform itself. To paraphrase Dar-win, it's not only the fittest that will survive, but those that are the quickest and the surest to adapt, will.
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